


Ever In Your Favor

by TheFakeAdam



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Feels, For the Love of Chuck, Inappropriate use of Spanish, M/M, Someone stop me, all the feels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-17 03:26:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8128637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFakeAdam/pseuds/TheFakeAdam
Summary: In what was once North America, the Capitol of Panem maintains its hold on its 12 districts by forcing them each to select two people, called Tributes, to compete in a nationally televised event called the Hunger Games. Every citizen must watch as the youths fight to the death until only one remains. District 12 Tribute Dean Winchester has little to rely on, other than his hunting skills and sharp instincts, in an arena where he must weigh survival against love.





	1. The Morning

**Author's Note:**

> ¿Que pasa? This is a little something I wrote because apparently I'm a masochist. Just like the rest of the fandom.
> 
> (By the way: I made a slight change to protocol. The tributes can be of any gender, not one boy and one girl. For... uh... plot reasons. *winks dramatically like a Mexican grandma*)

1.

When Dean wakes up, the other side of the bed is cold. Eyes still shut, his fingers stretch out, seeking Sam’s warmth but finding only the rough cover of the mattress. He must have had bad dreams and climbed in with their father. Of course, he did. This is the day of the reaping.

  
Dean props himself up on one elbow. There’s enough light to see them in the bedroom. His little brother, Sammy, curled up on his side next to their father. In sleep, John looks younger, still worn but not so beaten-down.

  
Sitting at Sam’s knees, guarding him, is the world’s meanest cat. Mashed-in nose, half of one ear missing, matted black fur. Sam named her Ruby, convinced that the cat was just as precious. She hates Dean, or, at least, distrusts him. Even though it was years ago, she still remembers how he tried to drown him in a bucket when Sam brought her home. Scrawny kitten, belly swollen with worms, crawling with fleas. The last thing Dean needed was another mouth to feed. But Sam begged so hard, cried even, that Dean had to let her stay. It turned out okay. Their father got rid of the vermin and she’s a born mouser. Even catches the occasional rat. Sometimes, when Dean cleans a kill, he’ll feed Ruby the entrails. She’s stopped hissing at him.

  
Entrails. No hissing. This is the closest they’ll ever come to love.

  
Dean swings his feet off the bed and slides into his hunting boots; supple leather that has molded to his feet. He puts on trousers, a shirt, runs his fingers through his short brown hair, and grabs his forage bag. On the table, under a beat-up wooden bowl to protect it from hungry rats and cats alike, sits a perfect little goat cheese wrapped in basil leaves. Sam’s gift to him on reaping day. Dean carefully puts the cheese in his pocket as he slips outside.

  
Their part of District 12, nicknamed the Seam, is usually crawling with coal miners heading out to the morning shift at this hour. Men and women with hunched shoulders, swollen knuckles, many who have long since stopped trying to scrub the coal dust out from under their broken nails and the lines of their sunken faces. But today, the black cinder streets are empty. Shutters on the squat gray houses are closed.

  
The reaping isn’t until two. May as well sleep in. If you can.

  
The Winchesters’ house is almost at the edge of the Seam. Dean only has to pass a few gates to reach the scruffy, overgrown field nicknamed the Meadow. Separating the Meadow from the woods (in fact, enclosing all of District 12) is a high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire. In theory, it’s supposed to be electrified twenty-four hours a day as a deterrent to the predators that live in the woods - packs of wild dogs, lone cougars, bears - that used to threaten the streets. But since they’re lucky to get two or three hours of electricity in the evenings, it’s usually safe to touch.

  
Even so, Dean always takes a moment to listen carefully for the hum that means the fence is live. Right now, it’s silent as a stone. Concealed by a clump of bushes, he flattens out on his belly and slides under a two-foot stretch that’s been loose for years. There are several other weak spots in the fence, but this one is so close to home he almost always enters the woods here.

  
As soon as he’s in the trees, Dean retrieves a bow and sheath of arrows from a hollow log. Electrified or not, the fence has been successful at keeping the flesh-eaters out of District 12. Inside the woods they roam freely, and there are added concerns such as venomous snakes, rabid animals, and no real paths to follow. But there’s also food if one knows how to find it. Dean’s mother knew and she taught him some things before she was blown to bits in a mine explosion. There wasn’t even anything to bury. Dean was eleven then. Five years later, he still wakes up screaming for her to run.

  
Even though trespassing in the woods is illegal and poaching carries the severest of penalties, more people would risk it if they had weapons. But most are not bold enough to venture out with just a knife. Dean’s bow is a rarity, crafted by his mother along with a few others that he keeps well hidden in the woods, carefully wrapped in waterproof covers. His mother could have made good money selling them, but if the officials found out she would have been publicly executed for inciting a rebellion. Most of the Peacekeepers turn a blind eye to the few people who hunt because they’re as hungry for fresh meat as anybody is. In fact, they’re among Dean’s best customers. But the idea that someone might be arming the Seam would never have been allowed  
In the fall, a few brave souls sneak into the woods to harvest apples. But always in sight of the Meadow. Always close enough to run back to the safety of District 12 if trouble arises.

  
“District 12. Where you can starve to death in safety,” Dean mutters. Then he glances quickly over his shoulder before continuing to walk. Even here, even in the middle of nowhere, one worries someone might overhear them.

  
When he was younger, he used to scare his father to death, the things he would blurt out about District 12, about the people who rule Panem from the far-off city called the Capitol. Eventually he understood that would only lead him to more trouble. So he learned to hold his tongue and to turn his features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read his thoughts. Do his work quietly in school. Make only polite small talk in the public market. Discuss little more than trades in the Hob, which is the black market where he makes most of his money. Even at home, where he’s less pleasant, he avoids discussing tricky topics. Like the reaping, or food shortages, or the Hunger Games. Sam might begin to repeat his words, and then where would they be?  
In the woods waits the only person with whom he can be himself. Bela. He can feel the muscles in his face relaxing, his pace quickening as he climbs the hills to their place, a rock ledge overlooking a valley. A thicket of berry bushes protects it from unwanted eyes. The sight of her waiting there brings a smiles. Bela says he never smiles except in the woods.

  
“Hey, Dean,” says Bela, in her strangely lilting voice. Bela’s father was a Peacekeeper in the Capitol, who had picked up the accent living there. After he was injured and declared unfit for duty, he came back home to 12 and had Bela. She held on to his accent, the only part of her resembling him, after he died years ago.

  
“Look what I shot.” She holds up a loaf of bread with an arrow stuck in it, and Dean laughs. It’s real bakery bread, not the flat, dense loaves they make from their grain rations. He takes it in his hands, pulls out the arrow, and holds the puncture in the crust to his nose, inhaling the fragrance that makes his mouth flood with saliva. Fine bread like this is for special occasions.

  
“Mm, still warm,” Dean says. She must have been at the bakery at the crack of dawn to trade for it. “What did it cost you?”

  
“Just a squirrel. Think the old man was feeling sentimental this morning,” says Bela. “Even wished me luck.”

  
“Well, we all feel a little closer today, don’t we?” he says, not even bothering to roll his eyes. “Prim left us a cheese.” Dean pulls it from his pocket.

  
Bela’s expression brightens at the treat. “Thank you, Prim. We’ll have a real feast.” Suddenly she falls into a heavy Capitol accent as she mimics Crowley, the maniacally upbeat man who arrives once a year to read out the names at the reaping. “I almost forgot! Happy Hunger Games!” She plucks a few blackberries from the bushes around them. “And may the odds-” She tosses a berry in a high arc towards him.

  
Dean catches it in his mouth and breaks the delicate skin with his teeth. The sweet tartness explodes across his tongue. “- be ever in your favor!” he finishes with equal verve. They have to joke about it because the alternative is to be scared out of their wits. Besides, the Capitol accent is so affected, almost anything sounds funny in it.

  
Dean watches as Bela pulls out her knife and slices the bread. She could be his sister. Straight, medium brown hair, tanned skin, the same green eyes. But they’re not related. Most of the families who work in the mines resemble each other this way.

  
His father’s parents were a part of the small merchant class that caters to officials, Peacekeepers, and the occasional Seam customer. They ran an apothecary shop in the nicer part of District 12. Since almost no one can afford doctors, apothecaries are their healers. His mother got to know his father because on her hunts, she would sometimes collect medicinal herbs and sell them to his shop to be brewed into remedies. He must have really loved her to leave his home for the Seam. Dean tries to remember that when all he can see is the man who sat by, blank and unreachable, while his children turned to skin and bones. He tries to forgive him for his mother’s sake. But, honestly, he’s not the forgiving type.

  
Bela spreads the bread slices with the soft goat cheese, carefully placing a basil leaf on each while Dean strips the bushes of their berries. They settle back in a nook in the rocks. From this place, they’re invisible but have a clear view of the valley, which is teeming with summer life, greens to gather, roots to dig, fish iridescent in the sunlight. The day is glorious, with a blue sky and soft breeze. The food’s wonderful, with the cheese seeping into the warm bread and the berries bursting in their mouths. Everything would be perfect if it really was a holiday, if all the day meant was roaming the mountains with Bela, hunting for the night’s supper. But instead they have to be standing in the square at two o’clock waiting for the names to be called out.

  
“We could do it, you know,” Bela says quietly.

  
“What?” Dean asks.

  
“Leave the district. Run off. Live in the woods. You and I, we could make it,” says Bela.

  
He doesn’t know how to respond, the idea is so preposterous. He just stares at her.

 

“If we didn’t have so many kids,” she adds quickly.

  
They’re not their kids, of course. But they might as well be. Bela’s two little brothers and a sister. Sam. And one may as well count their mothers, too, because how would they live without them? Who would fill those mouths that are always asking for more? With both of them hunting daily, there are still night when game has to be swapped for lard or shoelaces or wool, still nights when we go to bed with our stomachs growling.

  
“I never want to have kids,” Dean says, turning to look back at the view.

  
“I might. If I didn’t live here,” says Bela.

  
“But you do,” he says, irritated.

  
“Forget it,” she snaps back, taking another bite.

  
The conversation feels wrong. Leave? How could Dean leave Sammy, the only person in the world he’s certain he loves? And Bela is devoted to her family. They can’t leave, so why bother talking about it? And even if they did… where did talk of having kids come from? There was never anything romantic between Bela and Dean. When they met, Dean was a slim twelve-year-old, and although she was only two years older, she already looked like a woman. It took a long time for them to even become friends, to stop haggling over every trade and begin helping each other out.

  
Besides, if she wants kids, Bela won’t have any trouble finding a husband. She’s good-looking, she’s strong enough to handle work in the mines, and she can hunt. You can tell by the way the boys whisper about her when she walks by in school that they want her. It makes him jealous but not for the reason people would think. Good hunting partners are hard to find.

  
“What do you want to do?” Dean asks. They can hunt, fish, or gather.

  
“Let’s fish at the lake. We can leave our poles and gather in the woods. Get something nice for tonight.” Bela stuffs the last bite in her mouth and stands up.

  
Tonight. After the reaping, everyone is supposed to celebrate. A lot of people do, out of relief that their children have been spared for another year.

  
Two families will pull their shutters, lock their doors, and try to figure out how they will survive the painful weeks to come.

  
Dean and Bela do well. The predators ignore them on a day when easier, tastier prey abounds. By late morning, they have a dozen fish, a bag of greens and, best of all, a gallon of strawberries. Dean found the patch a few years ago, but Bela had the idea to string mesh nets around it to keep out the animals.

  
On the way home, they swing by the Hob, the black market that operates in an abandoned warehouse that once held coal. When a more efficient system was developed (transporting coal directly from the mines to the trains), the Hob gradually took over the space. Most businesses are closed by this time on reaping day, but the black market’s still fairly busy.

  
The two hunters easily trade six of the fish for good bread, the other two for salt. Ellen, the middle aged woman who sells bowls of hot soup from a large kettle, takes half the greens off their hands in exchange for a couple chunks of paraffin. They might do a tad better elsewhere, but they make an effort to keep on good terms with Ellen. She’s the only one who can consistently be counted on to buy wild dog. They don’t hunt them on purpose, but if one is attacked and takes out a dog or two, well… meat is meat.

  
“Once it’s in the soup, I’ll call it beef,” Ellen says with a wink. No one in the Seam would turn up their nose at a good leg of wild dog, but the Peacekeepers who come to the Hob can afford to be a little choosier.

  
When they finish their business at the market, they go to the back door of the mayor’s house to sell half the strawberries, knowing he has a particular fondness for them and can afford their price. The mayor’s son, Garth, opens the door. He’s in Dean’s year at school. Being the mayor’s son, you’d expect him to be a snob, but he’s all right. He just keeps to himself. Like Dean. Since neither of them really have a group of friends, they seem to end up together a lot at school. Eating lunch, sitting next to each other at assemblies, partnering for sports activities. They rarely talk, which suits them both just fine.

  
Today his drab school outfit has been replaced by an expensive white shirt and light brown trousers. His blonde hair is combed neatly. Reaping clothes.

  
“Nice shirt,” says Bela.

  
Garth shoots her a look, trying to see if it’s a genuine compliment or if she’s just being ironic. It is a nice shirt, but he would never be wearing it ordinarily. He presses his lips together and smiles. “Well, if I end up going to the Capitol, I want to look nice, don’t I?”

  
Now it’s Bela’s turn to be confused. Does he mean it? Or is he messing with her? Dean guesses it’s the second.

  
“You won’t be going to the Capitol,” says Bela coolly. Her eyes land on a small, circular pin that adorns his shirt. Real gold. Beautifully crafted. It could keep a family in bread for months. “What can you have? Five entries? I had six when I was just twelve years old.”

  
“That’s not his fault,” Dean says.

  
“No, it’s no one’s fault. Just the way it is,” says Bela. Garth’s face has become closed off. He puts money for the berries in Dean’s hand.

  
“Good luck, Dean.” He hugs the taller boy quickly.

  
“You too,” he says, and then the door closes.

  
They walk towards the Seam in silence. Dean doesn’t like that Bela took a dig at Garth, but she’s right, of course. The reaping system is unfair, with the poor getting the worst of it. One becomes eligible for the reaping the day they turn twelve. That year, their name is entered once. At thirteen, twice. And so on and so on until they reach the age of eighteen, the final year of eligibility, when their name goes into the pool seven times. That’s true for every citizen in all twelve districts in the entire country of Panem.

  
But here’s the catch. Say one is poor and starving as the Winchesters were. One can opt to add their name more times in exchange for tesserae. Each tessera is worth a meager year’s supply of grain and oil for one person. One can do this for each of their family members as well.

  
So, at the age of twelve, Dean had his name entered for times. Once, because he had to, and three times for tesserae for grain and oil for himself, Sam, and his father. In fact, every year he has needed to do this. And the entries are cumulative. So now, at the age of sixteen, his name will be in the reaping twenty times. Bela, who is eighteen and has been either helping or single-handedly feeding a family of five for seven years, will have her name in forty-two times.  
You can see why someone like Garth, who has never been at risk of needing a tessera, can set her off. The chance of his name being drawn is very slim compared to those who live in the Seam. Not impossible, but slim. And even though the rules were set up by the Capitol, not the districts, certainly not Garth’s family, it’s hard not to resent those who don’t have to sign up for tesserae.

  
Bela knows her anger at Garth is misdirected. On other days, deep in the woods, Dean has listened to her rant about how the tesserae are just another tool to cause misery in their district. A way to plant hatred between the starving workers of the Seam and those who can generally count on supper and thereby ensure they will never trust one another. “It’s to the Capitol’s advantage to have us divided among ourselves,” she might say if there were no ears to hear but Dean’s. If it wasn’t reaping day. If a boy with a gold pin and no tesserae had not made what he thought was a harmless comment.

  
As they walk, Dean glances over at Bela’s face, still smoldering underneath her stony expression. Her rages seem pointless to him, although he never says so. It’s not that he doesn’t agree with him. He does. But what good is yelling about the Capitol in the middle of the woods? It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t make things fair. It doesn’t fill their stomachs. In fact, it scares off the nearby game. He lets her yell though. Better she does it in the woods than in the district.

  
Bela and Dean divide their spoils, leaving two fish, a couple of loaves of good bread, greens, a quart of strawberries, salt, paraffin, and a bit of money for each.

  
“See you in the square,” Dean says.

  
“Wear something pretty,” she says sarcastically.

  
At home, he finds his father and brother are ready to go. His father wears a fine shirt from his apothecary days. Sam is in Dean’s first reaping outfit, brown pants and a clean white shirt. It’s a bit small on him. Even so, he’s having trouble keeping the shirt tucked in at the back.

  
A tub of warm water waits for Dean. He scrubs off the dirt and sweat from the woods and even washes his hair. To his surprise, his father has laid out one of his own shirts for him. A pale blue thing that’s barely been worn.

  
“Are you sure?” He asks. He’s trying to get past rejecting offers of help from him. For a while, he was so angry, he wouldn’t allow John to do anything for him. And this is something special. His clothes from his past are very precious to him.

  
“Of course.”

  
Dean can hardly recognize himself in the cracked mirror that leans against the wall.

  
“You look handsome,” says Sammy in a hushed voice.

  
“And nothing like myself,” Dean says. He hugs the younger boy, because he knows the next few hours will be terrible for him. His first reaping. He’s about as safe as you can get, since he’s only entered once. Dean wouldn’t let him take out any tesserae. But Sam’s worried about him. That the unthinkable might happen.

  
Dean protects him in every way he can, but he’s powerless against the reaping. The anguish he always feels when Sammy’s in pain wells up in his chest and threatens to register on his face. He notices that the boy’s shirt has pulled out of his pants in the back again and forces himself to stay calm. “Tuck your tail in, little moose,” he says, smoothing the shirt back in place.

 

Sam giggles.

  
“Come on, let’s eat,” Dean says.

  
The fish and greens are already cooking in a stew, but that will be for supper. They decide to save the strawberries and bakery bread for this evening’s meal, to make it special, they say. Instead they drink milk from Prim’s goat, Lady, and eat the rough bread made from tessera grain, although no one has much appetite anyway.

  
At one o’clock, they head for the square. Attendance is mandatory unless you are on death’s door. This evening, officials will come around and check to see if this is the case. If not, you’ll be imprisoned.

  
It’s too bad, really, that they hold the reaping in the square - one of the few places in District 12 that can be pleasant. The square’s surrounded by shops, and on public market days, especially if there’s good weather, it has a holiday feel to it. But today, despite the bright banners hanging on the buildings, there’s an air of grimness. The camera crews, perched like buzzards on the rooftops, only add to the effect.

  
People file in silently and sign in. The reaping is a good opportunity for the Capitol to keep tabs on the population as well. Twelve- through eighteen-year-olds are herded into roped areas marked off by ages, oldest in the front, the young ones, like Sam, toward the back. Family members line up around the perimeter, holding tightly to one another’s hands. But there are others, too, who have no one they love at stake, or who no longer care, who slip among the crowd taking bets on the two kids whose names will be drawn. Odds are given on their ages, whether they’re Seam or merchant, if they will break down and weep. Most refuse dealing with the racketeers but carefully, carefully. These same people tend to be informers, and who hasn’t broken the law? Dean could be shot on a daily basis for hunting, but the appetites of those in charge protect him. Not everyone can claim the same.

 

Anyway, he and Bela agree that if they have to choose between dying of hunger and a bullet in the head, the bullet would be much quicker.

  
The space gets tighter, more claustrophobic as people arrive. The square’s quite large, but not enough to hold District 12’s population of about eight thousand. Latecomers are directed to the adjacent streets, where they can watch the event on screens as it’s televised live by the state.

  
Dean finds himself standing in a clump of sixteens from the Seam. They all exchange terse nods, then focus their attention on the temporary stage that is set up before the Justice Building. It holds three chairs, a podium, and one large glass ball, containing everyone’s names. Dean stares at the jar. Twenty of them have Dean Winchester written on them in careful handwriting.

  
Two of the three chairs fill with Garth’s father, Mayor Fitzgerald, who’s a tall, balding man, and Crowley, District 12’s escort, fresh from the Capitol with his scarily white grin, dark hair, and dark green-black suit. They murmur to each other and then look with concern at the empty seat.

  
Just as the town clock strikes two, the mayor steps up to the podium and begins to speak. It’s the same speech every year.

  
Taking the kids from the districts, forcing them to kill one another while they watch - this is the Capitol’s way of reminding them how totally they are at their mercy. How little chance they would stand of surviving another rebellion.

  
Whatever words they use, the real message is clear. “Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there’s nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District 13.”

  
To make it humiliating as well as torturous, the Capitol requires us to treat the Hunger Games as a festivity, a sporting event pitting every district against the others. The last tribute alive receives a life of ease back home, and their district will be showered with prizes, largely consisting of food. All year, the Capitol will show the winning district gifts of grain and oil and even delicacies like sugar while the rest battle starvation.

  
“It is both a time for repentance and a time for thanks,” intones the mayor.

  
Then he reads the list of past District 12 victors. In seventy-four years, they have had exactly two. Only one is still alive. Bobby Singer, a paunchy, middle-aged man, who at this moment appears hollering something unintelligible, staggers onto the stage, and falls into the third chair. He’s drunk. Very. The crowd responds with its token applause, but he’s confused and tries to give Crowley a big hug, which he barely manages to fend off.

  
The mayor looks distressed. Since all of this is being televised, right now District 12 is the laughingstock of Panem, and he knows it. He quickly tries to pull the attention back to the reaping by introducing Crowley.

  
Smooth and sharp as ever, Crowley strides to the podium and gives his signature, “Happy Hunger Games. And may the odds be ever in your favor.” His tie has shifted slightly off-center since his encounter with Bobby. He goes on about what an honor it is to be here, although everyone knows he’s just aching to get bumped up to a better district where they have proper victors, not drunks who molest you in front of the entire nation.

  
Through the crowd, Dean spots Bela looking back at him with a ghost of a smile. As reapings go, this one at least has a slight entertainment factor. But suddenly, he’s thinking of Bela and her forty-two names in that big glass ball and how the odds are not in her favor. Not compared to a lot of the girls. And maybe she’s thinking the same thing, because her face darkens and she turns away. “But there are still thousands of slips,” Dean wishes he could whisper to her.

  
It’s time for the drawing. Crowley crosses to the ball. He reaches in, digs his hand deep in the ball, and pulls out a slip of paper. The crowd draws in a collective breath and then you can hear a pin drop, and Dean is feeling nauseous and so desperately hoping it’s not him, it’s not him, it’s not him.

  
Crowley crosses back to the podium, smoothes the slip of paper, and reads out the name in a clear voice. And it’s not Dean.

  
It’s Sam Winchester.


	2. The Reaping

2.

One time, when Dean was in a blind in a tree, waiting motionless for game to wander by, he dozed off and fell ten feet to the ground, landing on his back. It was as if the impact had knocked every wisp of air from his lungs, and he lay there struggling to inhale, to exhale, to do anything.

  
That’s how he feels now, trying to remember how to breathe, unable to speak, totally stunned as the name bounces around the inside of his skull.

  
There must have been some mistake. This can’t be happening. Sam was one slip of paper in thousands! His chances of being chosen were so remote Dean hadn’t even bothered to worry about him. Hadn’t he done everything? Taken the tesserae, refused to let him do the same? One slip. One slip in thousands. The odds had been entirely in his favor. But it hadn’t mattered.

  
Somewhere far away, he can hear the crowd murmuring unhappily as they always do when a twelve-year-old gets chosen because no one thinks this is fair. And then Dean sees him, the blood drained from his face, hands clenched in fists at his sides, walking with stiff, small steps up toward the stage, passing him, and Dean sees the back of his shirt has become untucked and hangs over his pants. It’s this detail that brings Dean back to himself.

  
“Sam!” The strangled cry comes out of his throat, and his muscles begin to move again. “Sammy!” He doesn’t need to shove through the crowd. The other kids make way immediately, allowing him a straight path to the stage. Dean reaches him just as he is about the mount the steps. With one sweep of his arm, he pushes Sam behind him.

 

“I volunteer!” He gasps. “I volunteer as tribute!”

  
There’s some confusion on the stage. District 12 hasn’t had a volunteer in decades and the protocol has become rusty. The rule is that once a tribute’s name has been pulled from the ball, another boy or girl can step forward and take their place. In some districts, in which winning the reaping is such a great honor, people are eager to risk their lives, and the volunteering is complicated. But in District 12, where the word tribute is pretty much synonymous with the word corpse, volunteers are all but extinct.

  
“Lovely!” says Crowley. “But I believe there’s a small matter of introducing the reaping winner and then asking for volunteers, and if one does come forth then we, um…” he trails off, unsure himself.

  
“What does it matter?” says the mayor. He’s looking at Dean with a pained expression on his face. He doesn’t know him really, but there’s a faint recognition there. Dean is the boy who brings the strawberries. The boy his son might have spoken of on occasion. The boy who five years ago stood huddled with his father and brother, as he presented him, the oldest child, with a medal of valor. A medal for his mother, vaporized in the mines. Does the mayor remember that? “What does it matter?” he repeats gruffly. “Let him come forward.”

  
Sam is shouting hysterically behind Dean. He’s wrapped his skinny arms around his older brother like a vice. “No, Dean! No! You can’t go!”

  
“Sammy, let go,” Dean says harshly, because this is upsetting him even more and he doesn’t want to cry. When they televise the replay of the reapings tonight, everyone will make note of his tears, and he’ll be marked as an easy target. A weakling. He will give no one that satisfaction. “Let go!”

  
Dean can feel someone pulling him away. He turns and sees Bela has lifted Sam away and he’s thrashing in her arms. “Up you go, Dean,” she says, in a voice she’s fighting to keep steady, and then she carries Sammy off towards their father.  
Dean steels himself and climbs the steps.

  
“Well, bravo!” says Crowley. “That’s the spirit of the Games!” He’s pleased to finally have a district with a little action going on in it. “What’s your name?”  
“Dean Winchester,” he says. His fists are clenched at his sides.

  
“I bet my buttons that was your brother. Don’t want him to steal all the glory, do we? Come on, everybody. Big round of applause to our newest tribute.”

  
To the everlasting credit of the people of District 12, not one person claps. Not even the ones holding betting slips, the ones who are usually beyond caring. Possibly because they know Dean from the Hob, or knew his mother, or have encountered Sam, who no one can help loving. So instead of acknowledging applause, Dean stands there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says they do not agree. They do not condone. All of this is wrong.

  
Then something unexpected happens. At least, Dean doesn’t expect it because he doesn’t think of District 12 as a place that cares about him. But a shift has occurred since he stepped up to take Sam’s place, and now it seems he has become someone precious. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to him. It’s an old and rarely used gesture of their district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means goodbye to someone you love.

  
Now Dean is truly in danger of crying, but fortunately Bobby chooses this time to come staggering across the stage to congratulate him. “Look at him. Look at this one!” he hollers, throwing an arm around the young man’s shoulders. He’s surprisingly strong for such a wreck. “I like him!” His breath reeks of liquor and it’s been a long time since he bathed. “Lots of... “ He can’t think of the word for a while. “Spunk!” he says triumphantly. “More than you!” he releases Dean and starts for the front of the stage. “More than you!” he shouts, pointing directly to a camera.

  
Is he addressing the audience or is he so drunk he might actually be taunting the Capitol? No one will know because just as he’s opening his mouth to continue, Bobby plummets off the stage and knocks himself unconscious.

  
He’s disgusting, but Dean’s grateful. With every camera gleefully trained on Bobby, the young man has just enough time to release the small, choked sound in his throat and compose himself. He puts his hands behind his back and stares into the distance.  
He can see the hills he climbed this morning with Bela. For a moment, he yearns for something… idea of them leaving the district… making their way in the woods… but he knows he was right about not running off. Because who else would have volunteered for Sammy?

  
Bobby is whisked away on a stretcher, and Crowley is trying to get the ball rolling again. “What an exciting day,” he says as he attempts to straighten his tie, which has listed severely to the right and is coming undone. “But more excitement to come! It’s time to choose our second tribute!” He crosses to the ball and grabs the first slip he encounters. He zips back to the podium, and Dean doesn’t even have time to wish for Bela’s safety when Crowley’s reading the name. “Castiel Novak.”

  
Castiel Novak!

 

Oh no, Dean thinks. Not him. Because he recognizes this name, although he has never spoken directly to its owner. Castiel Novak.

  
No, the odds are not in Dean’s favor today. He watches the shorter man as he makes his way to the stage. Medium height, slim build, messy black hair that falls over his forehead. The shock of the moment is registering on his face, one can his struggle to remain emotionless, but his blue eyes show the alarm Dean’s seen so often in prey. Yet he climbs steadily onto the stage and takes his place.

  
Crowley asks for volunteers, but no one steps forward. He has two older brothers, Dean knows, he’s seen them in the bakery, but one is probably too old now to volunteer and the other won’t. This is standard. Family devotion only goes so far for most people on reaping day. What Dean did was the radical thing.

 

The mayor begins to read the long, dull Treaty of Treason as he does every year - it’s required - but almost no one’s listening to a word.

  
Why him? Dean thinks. Then he tries to convince himself that it doesn’t matter. He and Castiel Novak are not friends. Not even neighbors. They don’t speak. Their only real interaction happened years ago. Castiel’s probably forgotten it. But Dean hasn’t, and he knows he never will.

  
It was during the worst time. His mother had been killed in the mine accident three months earlier in the bitterest January anyone could remember. The numbness of her loss had passed, and the pain would hit him out of nowhere, doubling him over, racking his body with broken sobs. Where are you? He would cry out in his mind. Where have you gone? Of course, there was never any answer. The district had given them a small amount of money as compensation for her death, enough to cover one month of grieving at which time John would be expected to get a job. Only he didn’t. He didn’t do anything but sit propped up in a chair or, more often, huddled under the blankets on his bed, eyes fixed on some point in the distance. Once in awhile, he’d stir, get up as if moved by some urgent purpose, only to then collapse back into stillness. No amount of pleading from Sam seemed to affect him.

  
Dean was terrified. He supposes now that his father was locked in some dark world on sadness, but at the time, all he knew was that he had lost not only a father, but a mother as well. At eleven years old, with Sammy just seven, he took over as head of the family. There was no choice. He bought their food at the market and cooked it as best he could and tried to keep Sam and himself looking presentable. Because if it had become known that their father could no longer care for them, the district would have taken them away from him and placed them in the community home. Dean had grown up seeing those home kids at school. The sadness, the marks of angry hands on their faces, the hopelessness that curled their shoulders forward. He could never let that happen to Sam. Sweet, tiny Sammy who cried when he cried before he even knew the reason, who brushed their father’s hair everyday before they went to school, who still polished their mother’s mirror every night because she’d hated the layer of coal dust that settled on everything in the Seam. The community home would crush him like a bug. So they kept their predicament a secret.

  
But the money ran out and they were slowly starving to death. There’s no other way to put it. Dean kept telling himself if he could only hold out until May, just May 8th, he would turn twelve and be able to sign up for the tesserae and get that precious grain and oil to feed them. Only there were still several weeks to go. They could be well dead by then.

  
Starvation’s not an uncommon fate in District 12. Who hasn’t seen the victims? Older people who can’t work. Children from a family with too many to feed. Those injured in the mines. Straggling through the streets. And one day, you come upon them sitting motionless against a wall or lying in the Meadow, you hear the wails from a house, and the Peacekeepers are called in to retrieve a body. Starvation is never the cause of death officially. It’s always the flu, or exposure, or pneumonia. But that fools no one.

  
On the afternoon of Dean’s encounter with Castiel Novak, the rain was falling in relentless icy sheets. Dean had been in town, trying to trade some threadbare old baby clothes of Sam’s in the public market, but there were no takers. Although he had been to the Hob on several occasions with his mother, he was too frightened to venture into that rough, gritty place alone. The rain had soaked through his mother’s hunting jacket, leaving him chilled to the bone. For three days, they’d had nothing but boiled water with some old dried mint leaves he’d found in the back of a cupboard. By the time the market closed, Dean was shaking so hard he dropped the bundle of baby clothes in a mud puddle. He didn’t pick it up for fear he would keel over and be unable to regain his feet. Besides, no one wanted those clothes.

  
He couldn’t go home. Because at home was his father with his dead eyes, and his little brother with his hollow cheeks and cracked lips. Dean couldn’t walk into that room with the smoky fire from the damp branches he had scavenged at the edge of the woods after the coal had run out.

  
Dean found himself stumbling along a muddy lane behind the shops that serve the wealthiest townspeople. The merchants live above their businesses, so he was essentially in their backyards. He remembers the outlines of garden beds not yet planted for the spring, a goat or two in a pen, one sodden dog tied to a post, hunched defeated in the muck.

  
All forms of stealing are forbidden in District 12. Punishable by death. But it crossed his mind that there might be something in the trash bins, and those were fair game. Perhaps a bone at the butcher’s or rotted vegetables at the grocer’s; something no one but his family were desperate enough to eat. Unfortunately, the bins had just been emptied.

  
When Dean passed the baker’s, the smell of fresh bread was so overwhelming he felt dizzy. The ovens were in the back, and a golden glow spilled out the open kitchen door. He stood mesmerized by the heat and the luscious scent until the rain interfered, running its icy fingers down his back, forcing him to life. He lifted the lid to the baker’s trash bin and found it spotlessly, heartlessly bare.

  
Suddenly a voice was screaming at him and he looked up to see the baker’s wife, telling him to move on and did he want her to call the Peacekeepers and how sick she was of having those brats from the Seam pawing through her trash. The words were ugly and he had no defense. As he carefully replaced the lid and backed away, he noticed him, a boy with black hair peering out from behind his mother’s back. Dean had seen him at school. They were in the same year, but he didn’t know the boy’s name.  
The baker’s wife went back into the bakery, grumbling, but her son must have been watching the hungry boy as he made his way behind the pig pen and leaned against an old apple tree. The realization that Dean would have nothing to take home had finally sunk in. His knees buckled and he slid down the tree trunk to its roots. It was too much. He was too sick and weak and tired, oh, so tired. Let them call the Peacekeepers and take us to the community home, he thought. Or better yet, let me die right here in the rain.

  
There was a clatter in the bakery and he heard the woman screaming again and the sound of a blow, and he vaguely wondered what was going on. Feet sloshed toward him through the mud and he thought, It’s her. She’s coming to drive me away with a stick. But it wasn’t her. It was the boy. In his arms, he carried two large loaves of bread that must have fallen into the fire because the crusts were scorched black.

  
His mother was yelling, “Feed it to the pig, you stupid creature! Why not? No one decent will buy burned bread!”

  
He began to tear chunks from the burned parts and toss them into the trough, and the front bakery bell rung and the mother disappeared to help a customer.

 

The boy never even glanced Dean’s way, but Dean was watching him. Because of the bread, because of the red weal that stood out on his cheekbone. What had she hit him with?

  
Dean’s parents never hit them. He couldn’t even imagine it. The boy took one look back to the bakery as if checking that the coast was clear, then, his attention back on the pig, he threw a loaf of bread in Dean’s direction. The second quickly followed, and he sloshed back to the bakery, closing the kitchen door tightly behind him.

  
Dean stared at the loaves in disbelief. They were fine, perfect really, except for the burned areas. Did the baker’s son mean for him to have them? He must have. Because they were at his feet. Before anyone could witness what had happened he shoved the loaves up under his shirt, wrapping the hunting jacket tightly about him, and walked away. The heat of the bread burned his skin, but he clutched it tighter, clinging to life.

  
By the time Dean reached home, the loaves had cooled somewhat, but the insides were still warm. When he dropped them on the table, Sam’s hands reached to tear off a chunk, but the older boy made him sit, forced their father to join them at the table, and poured warm tea. He scraped off the black stuff and sliced the bread. They ate an entire loaf, slice by slice. It was good, hearty bread, filled with raisins and nuts.

  
Dean put his clothes to dry at the fire, crawled into bed, and fell into a dreamless sleep. It didn’t occur to him until the next morning that the boy might have burned the bread on purpose. Might have dropped the loaves into the flames, knowing it meant being punished, and then delivered them to Dean. But he dismissed this. It must have been an accident. Why would he have done it? They didn’t even know each other. Still, just throwing him the bread was an enormous kindness that would have surely resulted in a beating if discovered. Dean couldn’t explain his actions.

  
They ate slices of bread for breakfast and headed to school. It was as if spring had come overnight. Warm sweet air. Fluffy clouds. At school, Dean passed the boy in the hall; his cheek had swelled up and his eye had blackened. He was with his friends and didn’t acknowledge him in any way. But as Dean collected Sam and started for home that afternoon, he found the boy staring at him from across the school yard. Their eyes met only for a second, then the dark haired boy turned his head away. Dean dropped his gaze, embarrassed, and that’s when he saw it. The first dandelion of the year. A bell went off in his head. He thought of the hours spent in the woods with his mother and he knew how they were going to survive.

  
To this day, Dean can never shake the connection between this boy, Castiel Novak, and the bread that gave him hope, and the dandelion that reminded him that he was not doomed. And more than once, he has turned in the school’s hallway and caught Castiel’s eyes on him, only to quickly flit away. Dean feels like he owes him something, and he hates owing people. Maybe if he had thanked Castiel at some point, he’d be feeling less conflicted now. He thought of it a couple times, but the opportunity never seemed to present itself. And now it never will. Because they’re going to be thrown in an arena to fight to the death. Exactly how is he supposed to work in a thank-you in there? Somehow it just won’t seem sincere if he’s trying to slit the other boy’s throat.

  
The mayor finishes the dreary Treaty of Treason and motions for Castiel and Dean to shake hands. His are as solid and warm as those loaves of bread. Castiel looks him right in the eye and gives his hand what he thinks is supposed to be a reassuring squeeze. Maybe it’s just a nervous spasm.

  
They turn back to face the crowd as the anthem of Panem plays.

  
Oh well, Dean thinks. There will be twenty-four of us. Odds are someone else will kill him before I do.

  
Of course, the odds have not been very dependable of late.


End file.
